Sunday, June 14, 2015

Handy Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Chrome

Sometimes using the mouse just takes up extra time. I've got some handy keyboard shortcuts for you today that will save you some time and effort when working in Google Chrome.

Control-T (Command-T for Mac) - This will open a new tab.Control-W (Command-W) - This will close the active tab. The active tab is whatever tab you are currently working in. This can come in especially handy if you are working through a whole class of Google Docs.

Control-Shift-T (Command-Shift-T) - This will reopen the last tab you closed. This is really useful if you accidentally closed a tab, or realize you needed one more thing from the document or web page you just closed. Google Chrome remembers the last 10 tabs you closed.

Control-Tab (Works for Mac also!) - This will switch you to the next open tab (moves you one tab to the right). If you are on your last tab, it will take you back to the first one.

Control-Shift-Tab (Also works for Mac) - This will switch you to the previous tab (moves you one tab to the left). If you are on your first tab, it will take you to the last tab.

Control-1 through Control-8 (Command-1 through Command-8) - This will take you to tab in that position across the top of your screen. For instance, if you want the third tab from the left, you push Control-3 (Command-3). If you are like me and often have more than 8 tabs open, Control-9 (Command-9) will take you to the last tab, no matter how many tabs are open.

This one does use a mouse - but I use it quite a bit, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Press Control (Command) while you click a link - This will open the link in a new tab. You can then click on that tab to see the new webpage. This works especially well if you are doing a Google Search. You can open several of the links that look promising as you look through the results and then click through the tabs to view. It also means you don't have to hit the back button to return to your results because they stay open in the original tab. If you want it to open the results in a new tab and have it take you to directly to that tab, you can press Control-Shift (Command-Shift) while you click the link.

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog. Stop by again soon for more handy tech tips!